The His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche conducted the first Chod Puja in the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Center in Kyoto, Japan on Aug. 16, 2008. There were around 80 people attended this puja, including local believers from Japan and the disciples from Taiwan. This was the second Chod Puja by Rinpoche in Japan after the first Chod held on the Sagano Sight-seeing Tram in Kyoto in Dec. 2007.
The puja started at p.m. 5:30. At the beginning, Rinpoche enshrined a statue of shakyamuni Buddha bestowed by Yunga Rinpoche in the mandala and then enlightened: “Both in Japanese and Chinese customs, people venerate the spirit tablets and try to perform transference of their consciousness. However, only Buddha dharma could really help to transfer the consciousness of our ancestors to the pure land.” After giving the enlightenment about the rareness and auspiciousness of the Chod puja, Rinpoche started to conduct Chod puja. After the conduction is completed perfectly, Rinpoche gave the blessings to the attendees with the ritual instrument made of a human tibia bone, and furthermore gave blessings to the attendees one by one with the statue of Lord Jigten Sumgon.
That night was also the night of the important annual ancestor worship “Daimonji Fire Festival” in Kyoto. After the puja, Rinpoche invited the attendees to have dinner in the garden of venue and to view the characters depicted in fire lit on the slopes of mountains surrounded. When the fire lit burned out and the guests were leaving, Rinpoche still painstakingly continued to give blessings to the patients of serious disease in the venue.
Updated on September 16, 2008